Rent Analysis with revised opinions 11/25/2010

Should you buy buildings based on their rent return? Quite frankly, at the early stages of the game you should. Once you reach L20 and you add your south and west kingdoms, it may be less of a concern, but you should still consider it.

As you reach the higher levels you may be thinking of other concerns, and after L30 it’s up to you. My main focus is appearance in four of the five realms. Only the my east realm has been sacrificed to revenue, and even then I still put a little thought into how it looks (not much, but a little).

Here are my thoughts on considering rent when making building purchases.

Levels 5-10: Contrary to my earlier assessments, corrected numbers indicate the rent return on the available shops is negligible.

Levels 10-20 you should concentrate on building shops that will provide the best value to customers. But a couple of shops may be worth investing in for the rent value.

Once you can purchase ruby groves (L23), those should be your primary harvest/revenue generating focus. If you’re just placing a building to occupy space, occupy space with a grove.

Once you have 30 customers consistently, or you reach L25 and your 3rd realm, you have to decide whether free space is for revenue or design. If it’s design, building rent is important. If it’s revenue, keep adding groves.

Poseidon’s fount and the mermaids’ isle are the only shops whose idle return exceeds its commercial return.The mermaid’s isle is not availbale until L30. But it’s gorgeous and pays better to sit there and do nothing. Poseidon’s fount is a waste as as far as ordering goes, but it’s rent value is off the charts. Is the return for one fount better than for the equivalent cost in groves? Not even close, but it takes up far less space.

This means if you have a chance to buy and upgrade a realm, do it. At your first opportunity. More space means more space for rubies or rent making buildings. If you want a good looking kingdom, the more real estate you have the more room you have to spread out your ruby groves.

You should also understand that the experience return for rentals is low in comparison to the return for shopping. So the cash return will always be better when your building is idle.

Currently the best rent return is the Pirate Ship and Spice Shop, both paying between $20-22 an hour. The Wizard’s tower provides the best return of any shop in the early going.

The Pirate Ship isn’t available until L33, but the spice market becomes available at L21 so you can take advantage sooner. Both seem to occupy the same amount of space, even though the ship looks bigger.

However, I would still cash those wizard towers in for rubies as soon as you can do so. Wizards pay two coins more per hour than trees, but 13 fewer experience points. Not only that, but the tower occupies the same space as two groves. As a consequence, for the same space you can generate almost twice as many coins and twelve times the experience points.

Starting your kingdom

Until you reach L9, you should focus on building ponds and tailor shops. Both have an excellent customer return. The other advantage of these items is their extremely low cost, at 1500 coins each. Sadly, the idle return for shops doesn’t look good before L10. On the bright side, you can get to L10 in a day if you really focus on harvesting profitable crops and spend time with the game.

It may seem counterintuitive to focus on a couple of items rather than building a village, and that is always an option. But in my experience, the more quickly you increase your return with a smaller investment, the more quickly you can expand your kingdom and add realms to make room for the more expensive, less profitable items.

Furthermore, because your investment is small, you won’t lose as much when you sell of the property to upgrade to a more expensive building.

Forget the mine after you install the first one unless you need to earn experience points immediately. The immediate payoff in experience points is 10 percent or 100xp, but from that point on, the return is terrible. Save the money froms crops for more profitable shops later on.

The first decent shop for idle return opens at L9 and it’s the cemetery, which at 30m may be more than you want to invest. And if you can postpone one level, you may find something better.

Expanding

At L10, the Tower of Light and Dark Castle become available although you will be faced with the first harsh hit of reality: ngmoco:) wants as much of your money as they can get. You have to pay for both, but you can also move them at will between the realms that start becoming available at L15. At 27 combined points both offer the second highest total available below L20.

L10 is when the game starts to become challenging, and you should focus on the more profitable shops. The higher customer return from your pond and tailor shop should allow you to add the bigger ticket items that players like.

The wizard’s tower, which becomes available at L11 is an excellent purchase because it pays off when idle at more than $18 an hour. The gorgoyle statuary at L15 offers $16 per hour with 28cp, the highest payout between L10 and L20.

But here’s the sad news. As far as idle profit goes, you’ll discover it’s a law of diminishing returns. After the wizard’s tower and gargoyle statuary, rates collapse. The Wizard’s tower provides a decent return for customer sales, but don’t invest in too many. You might want to save your money for more profitable shops later.

Two of the honeybee hives and the magic emporiums (at $15.25 and $14.58 per hour) can fit into the space of one tower. As always, there’s a catch. The beehive is only available with mojo, and the emporium, at level 18 is 55000 coins.

This is a tough decision here, and you need to think seriously. Personally, since you can purchase orange groves for $3K (or 5 mojo) at L15, I wouldn’t make a heavy investment in rent properties anymore. The groves will push you more quickly to L17 where you can start harvesting magic cauliflower. The cauliflower will give you a good cash return ($1300 per field profit on eight fields, which will soon expand).

My best suggestion would be three or four towers, two-to-three honeybee hives and a couple of emporiums by the time you reach L18. You may want to add one Poseidon’a Fount, especially if you don’t have a lot of customer orders yet but the orange groves give you far more experience for the same investment in coins. You should be relying on cash income from crops, experience from oranges and cultivating customers by investing in the most profitable shops.

Poseidon’s Fount (L18) is better than many groves with 61cp hourly.

L23 and beyond

Once you can install ruby groves and harvest cauliflower, focus on profitable shops. The Spice Market, available at L21 is an extraordinary investment because it performs superbly for customers (with 50 combined points and and almost 60 for you), and empty ($20 per hour). So don’t worry about rental return any more. The pond and tower still outperform every shop but the spice market for idle income until you hit the mid-thirties.

The mermaids’ isle and Poseidon’s fount have the highest idle payout at 42 and 61 combined hourly points.

The only better performer for cash income than the market and tower is the Pirate Ship at L33, which pays close to $22 per hour. The ship, spice market and red dragon finish in the top 3 for combined points (cp). The demon cave has a high experience return (18.5xp) pushing it to 32cp. So the bottom line after L30 is the shops that are good for customers are also the shops that perform well empty.

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Hi,
I like your charts and in my first days of the game they taught me a lot. But you really should have a closer look at the pond’s profits, because they’re not that good when idle… They don’t pay every 8 hour like you say, but only after (I think) 36 hour.
Have fun in the game!

Hi,
I like your charts and analyses a lot, and they helped me a lot in my first days of playing We Rule, but you really should have another look at the pond’s profits. They’re not that good when idle, because they don’t pay every 8 hour but only every 36… So the 3 ponds I placed after reading your blog aren’t as profitable as I was hoping for 🙂

Sorry, I do try to double check everything, but occasionally stuff slips through the cracks. I don’t know if I got it wrong, or if ngmoco:) changed the times after the post (they did that with houses). I’m sure it’s the former. I hope it’s the former or my charts could all be wrong in a year.